Cedar Hill Police are using social media to warn of an increase in vehicle break-ins this month.
A post on the police department’s Facebook page reads:
“This month we have experienced an unusually high number of vehicle break-ins. So far during the month of October, 33 vehicle break-ins have been reported across the City.”
The message is also on the department’s Twitter and they push it out on the neighborhood app Next Door.
Lt. Colin Chenault says many of the break-ins are preventable, and they want to help people from falling victim to thieves.
“We feel like that with our social media platforms we are really able to reach out to a lot more people in a quicker period of time, and the faster we can get the word out that we need to lock or doors or we need to hide stuff that are in our cars, the quicker we can see a reduction in those numbers,” Chenault said.
In many cases, Chenault says it’s as simple a taking a few extra steps.
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“Most of what we’re seeing are people who are leaving their car doors unlocked,” he said. “Really simple, if they just locked their car doors, [it] would really prevent these offenses from occurring.”
But for Thomas Deason, the victim of a break-in, it wasn’t that easy.
Deason’s truck was broken into this month in his own driveway, and thieves took thousands of dollars worth of tools he used for his business.
“They actually broke in the quarter panel windows on both sides, and they just literally reached in and grabbed all my tools and within a couple minutes, they were gone,” Deason said.
Police say Deason’s truck was one of a series of about 10 vehicle burglaries in a certain area earlier in October.
Police were able to make some arrests in the case, and recovered Deason’s tools.
